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by MilenaDaniels



Series: The Places We Belong [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkward Raven Reyes, David Miller: Best Worst Father Ever, Emotionally Constipated David Miller, Emotionally Constipated Nathan Miller, Family Feels, Father-Son Relationship, Good Parent David Miller, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Nathan Miller Angst, Nightmares, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV David Miller, POV Outsider, POV Outsider on Monty Green/Nathan Miller, Post-Mount Weather, Season/Series 02, Sharing a Bed, most of the angst comes from David he's seriously hard on himself, sorry raven I couldn't resist, those last two are for minty btw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-03-18 10:11:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3565805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilenaDaniels/pseuds/MilenaDaniels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David Miller is reunited with his son after years of incarceration and two months on the ground, and their dynamic is about as smooth as it was before he was arrested, which is to say, not at all. But he's determined to make things better this time, and he'll take any help he can get, even if it comes in the form of random boys his son tries (unsuccessfully) to sneak in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A few notes before we kick off: 
> 
> 1) This was written before the finale and therefore was based on the little bits we saw before that, aka Miller's comment about his dad being ashamed of him, and David's appearances on-screen being used solely to express concern over his son. From all that, I felt like they probably loved each other very much, but were shit at communication, and that probably resulted in lots of angst. And I actually feel like the little, insecure moment of hesitation before their hug in the finale supports this hypothesis, but that's just my headcanon. Anyhow, I'm personally hoping we see a lot of relationship development for Nathan and his dad in S3, and hopefully it will be less angsty than this :P
> 
> 2) This is definitely a Minty fic to the core. I am the biggest sucker for POV Outsider on a relationship, and that trope is literally the only reason this fic exists. That being said, first chapter is just the Miller boys because I couldn't ignore their story. Relatedly, I'm trying to learn from my mistakes and not spoil with the tags WAY ahead of time so do expect the tags to be updated in a Minty way with the new chapters.

David Miller was a failure as a parent. He knew that. 

He’d been a good husband, a good Chief Guard. But as a parent, he had failed.

For a long time, he’d told himself there were just some people who were good at parenting, some people for whom it was instinctive, and others for whom it…wasn’t. Some parents couldn’t sleep until they’d crept down the hall and watched their child sleep for a few minutes, and others just didn’t feel that innate need. David had married someone with that instinct. Every night, his wife would stand guard over Nate, and David had thought that meant they’d be covered - she could be the kind of parent who had all the answers, who would always knew what their child needed, and he could be the one to back her up, support her, be the last line of defence to her first. As Chief Guard, he’d known the importance of that last line of defence, and of teamwork in general. It worked. It was balanced. And their family was stronger for it.

The problem with teamwork and complementary skills is that when half the team leaves, they take those skills with them. And when they die after two weeks in Medical and a lost fight against bacterial pneumonia, and the other team member can’t remember what the protocol is for life after the ground is ripped out from under you…the ball gets dropped. 

In a single moment, their twelve-year old son lost his mother and all the decent parenting he was ever going to get. 

It made David sick to his stomach to think back on those years, to see so clearly how he could have fixed things if he’d just made a damned effort to reach out; if he’d been _able_ to. But he hadn’t been able to. He’d been lost to his own grief, lost to his fear of failure, and therefore ironically doomed to it. 

For years afterwards, he and Nate had lived like strangers in their quarters. Nate had always been quieter boy than most his age, happier to observe than to participate, and maybe even a bit shy, but the silence between them had grown crushing. David had kept thinking that one day he’d know what to say to break it, that he’d know the words to use to show his son he cared and was there for him, but he never even came close. He would try to ask Nate how he was, really _;_  his mouth would open and his hand would even sometimes reach out for him, but then his son would look up at him, painfully wary, and no words would come out. Instead, he made general inquiries about his studies, his plans, his schedule, and that was the extent of it. And so, over time, his congenial, quiet little boy turned more somber, his face grew out its mournful expression and into one of resentment and anger, and still the silence held. Whenever they found themselves in the same place at the same time, Nate answered his father’s perfunctory questions as simply as he could, and cleanly exited down the hallway to his room. 

His mother would have followed him. 

His mother would have knocked on his door after a few hours and talked to him gently. 

And later on, in the middle of the night, his mother would have opened the door a crack to make sure he wasn’t being kept up by his troubles. 

His father watched him disappear behind his bedroom door, and didn’t try to follow. 

And when his son was arrested for theft, in that moment when David truly understood just how much he’d failed, when his son looked at him for the first time in years with something other than bitterness because the fear of death by floating was stronger than his hatred for his father, David gave his last order as Chief Guard. 

He ordered his men to take Nate to a holding cell, and he didn’t follow.

Much later, David returned to their family quarters that weren’t family quarters anymore - and never again would be - and, five years late, he finally walked those nineteen steps down to his son’s room. He opened the door, and let himself collapse against the doorframe, dropping like a stone under the weight of his self-hatred, wondering why it had taken _this_ to make this journey. 

It was a question he would ask himself nightly for the next three years, and to which he would never come up with a better answer than, “I failed him”.

Two years later, his son was chosen as one of the hundred kids to be sent to Earth, and David fought so hard against it that he’d gotten himself arrested. Only the knowledge that he wouldn’t join the drop ship but would instead be immediately floated kept him from decking the Chancellor, and when he learned the man had been shot, he felt no shame in the bit of satisfaction that unfurled in his stomach.

Against all odds, the kids survived - _his son_ _survived_ \- and when they found a way to contact them, every parent of the 100 was given a communication schedule to see their kids again. 

David had walked down to the comm room a half hour before his allotted time. 

Nate hadn’t shown up at all.

* * *

When he next saw his son, Nate was walking stiffly into Camp Jaha, surrounded by kids and soldiers who looked like they'd been beaten half to hell by the Mountain Men. But Nate was walking under his own power, and David took several hurried steps forward before he realized that while the other kids were straining their necks in every direction and lightly shoving each other for a better look at who might be there waiting for them, Nate was simply casting his eyes around like he always did, the eternal observer. He wasn’t searching for anyone in particular, he wasn’t searching for him. 

Eventually though, Nate’s eyes did land on him, and they both stopped breathing for a moment. David willed his legs to move forward, to run to his son and hold him and start making up for the past 17 years. But he didn’t. He wiped at the tear that slipped down his cheek and jerked his head in greeting. Nate’s eyes became shuttered, familiarly so, but he nodded back. 

Nate looked back at his group, looking for someone else, and when he was satisfied with what he saw, he finally made his way out of the crowd and to his father. They were an arm’s length away from each other, closer than they’d been in nearly three years; it would be so easy to just reach out and tug him to his body, but all he could manage was a hand on his shoulder.

“Are you okay?” He asked, appreciating that his voice wavered - let his body betray his feelings to his son since he couldn’t manage it on his own.

“Yeah,” Nate answered simply, not making eye contact.

“You have a beard,” David noted distantly, surreally.

The non-sequitur seemed to catch Nate off-guard, and a hint of that old bitterness crept into the blankness in his eyes. 

“Yeah,” he answered, more sharply.

“It looks good,” David said, uselessly. 

Nate seemed to want to roll his eyes, but he was better controlled than that now. His maturity had come in the form of even more restraint than he’d always had.

“You hungry?” 

Nate deflated somewhat and shrugged. “Tired, mostly.”

David could fix that, he could do something for his tired son.

“I’ve go - we’ve got quarters in a cleared out section of Alpha.” Nate didn’t miss the slip up. “You’ve got a whole room to yourself,” he added, hoping it would help. 

Nate didn’t refuse him, but David suspected he wouldn’t have refused a decently smooth rock to lay on either.

“I’ll show you,” he said, turning in Alpha’s direction, slowly, to make sure his son was following.

* * *

The walk towards the remains of Alpha station was silent, a stark contrast to the sounds of laughter and excitement they encountered on the way, but David told himself it was enough that his son was back for now. That the rest would follow. 

When they finally arrived at the end of a corridor within Alpha’s shell, David activated the door and silently welcomed his son home, marvelling at the fact that he could. The space wasn’t overly large, but it was mostly clean, safe, and had two bedrooms and a living room like their old quarters. 

“It’s a city of tents outside. How’d you swing this?” Nate asked.

“Our Chief Guard died on duty,” he said. He thought it was the parental thing to do to spare his son the details. Only after he spoke did he realize his son would probably have seen much worse on this planet than he had. “I...had the most experience after her, so they gave me the rank.” 

There was a moment where confusion reigned on Nate’s face, and David suddenly understood that he never heard about his demotion. It had been a direct result of Nate’s incarceration; David hadn’t been party to the theft but as father to the minor, he was still found to be responsible enough to be demoted to a lesser rank. But while he might not be able to spare his son the details of violent deaths, he could spare him the details of that at least.

“Chief Guard has to stay close to the Chancellor, and Chancellor stays in Alpha, so here we are.”

Nate nodded, and looked around dispassionately. 

“Your room is that one,” David said, walking around him to open the door on the other side of the living room. The door’s movements were a little rough when it tried to open, and there was an inch-wide gap when it was meant to close. “We can switch though, if you don’t like it.” 

The room itself was small, and incredibly sparse, without windows, shelving or really much in the way of furniture. There was a single bed with pillows and a few threadbare blankets, as well as a short dresser with a few bits of clothing inside and a lamp on top. No night table. David thought he should have switched their rooms before now, should have taken this one when he’d first moved in.

Nate took half a second’s look and said, “It’s fine.”

He wanted to ask his son where he’d been sleeping in the mountain, and before, if he’d been comfortable, if he’d been cold, if this was better at all, if there was anything else he could do. 

Instead, he said, “Good. Well, I’ll let you get some rest. They’ve set up a kind of commissary on the eastern side of the camp. Whenever you get hungry, we can just head on over.”

“Don’t you have work?”

“I - yes. I’m on shift now, but I’ll probably be off when you wake up.”

“Okay,” Nate said, finally crossing the threshold into his room. “See you later.”

And then the door was closed (or as closed as it could be), and David found he couldn’t pull himself away. In an ironic parody of his previous attempts at parenting, he couldn’t make his feet carry him away from the space outside his son’s room. He gave himself a few minutes to listen to the sounds of blankets being pulled back, of a body settling down onto the squeaky-springed mattress, of his _living son_ making himself at home here. And when there was nothing to hear anymore, he left to resume his shift.

* * *

They never did go to the commissary together. 

When David returned, exactly nine minutes after his shift ended, Nate was gone. The only reason David didn’t immediately settle into complete panic was the small stack of personal items left in Nate’s room: a small knife, dirty socks he’d exchanged for the newer ones in the dresser, an old, mildly bloodied bandage. He hadn’t _left_ , he’d just…gone out. 

But he _could_ leave now. He was 17, nearly 18, and he’d survived on his own for months (if not years, if he was being honest). He wasn’t a child who needed an adult to take care of his essential life needs; after two months on Earth, he’d more than proven that.

He didn’t _need_ to be here, and the thought had David sagging down against the wall in the middle of the hallway.

Nate didn’t come home that night. David knew that because he stayed there, on the floor outside his son's room, for a very long time. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, everyone! My writing was interrupted and I couldn't get this chapter to work the way I wanted to, or end where I wanted it to. But I just figured it out tonight! ...unfortunately, that does mean the Minty was pushed back to the next chapter, but the next chapter is Minty fresh like woah, I promise!
> 
> Chapterly-reminder that I love David Miller to death and want to wrap him in blankets, but he's rough on himself in my head so I'm rough on him in my fic. That being said, writing this chapter, I felt like the fic could have been titled, “All the ways David Miller loved his son without Nate knowing a damned thing.”

Nate didn’t disappear entirely from their quarters in Alpha like David had feared; he showed up briefly the next day, and even slept there that night. But in the week that followed, David watched helplessly as they returned to their former dynamic, as something akin to roommates - nodding out of courtesy whenever they found each other in the same space, disappearing into private space as soon as possible. “Family” was so far from what they were that he couldn’t even remember what it would look like. 

The worst was that, just like he had years ago, David knew exactly how he could break this status quo. He had so many questions to ask his son about what he’d been through (even though he knew he wouldn’t like a single answer) and he was overflowing with the need to just stop him one morning and tell him…so many things.  

But what makes a habit a habit is the near inability to keep yourself from falling into it again. And David had tripped and fallen, hating himself the entire way down. And in some ways, he’d widened the distance between them considerably because while years ago he would have asked Nate about his plans, his schedule, and his friends, he couldn’t force the words to come out now. Every time he tried, he remembered the night he spent on the hallway floor, convinced his son would realize he was his own man and didn’t need to be around his father anymore. Irrationally, he felt like if he brought up Nate’s life outside of these walls, his son would suddenly realize he was better off out there, with people who understood him and gave him what he needed. 

So David said nothing, he nodded his hellos, and got comfortable with this ugly familiarity. His only saving grace being his nightly trek down the hallway. Every night Nate chose to sleep there, David would wait an hour or so and tiptoe across the living area to check in on him, to reassure himself that his boy was there, he was breathing, and sleeping comfortably. 

He was still a failure of a parent during the day, but this little thing he could do. 

 

* * *

 

There was a sick irony to be found here, David thought when the Chancellor declared they’d given the delinquents - _former_ delinquents - quite enough leeway and that it was time to check in on them, find out what they were up to, and what their plans were.

They hadn’t caused any mischief since their return but the rest of camp had no more answers to their many questions than that and it was making people uncomfortable to have a group of self-governed former delinquent and recently traumatized children in their backyard. 

He could delegate this mission, and in fact he should. It wasn’t a job that required his skills or leadership, it would only be proper to send one of his people out to investigate. 

But he felt he had to do this himself. First, to prove to himself that he wasn’t a coward. And second, because for all that he trusted his guards - mostly because he had no other choice, really - he realized that he didn’t trust them not to misinterpret what they found or jump to conclusions or otherwise bias their observations. He didn’t trust them to trust his son the way he did.

So he went out himself and he didn’t have far to go before he found the first clues of what the kids had been up to. David hadn’t done a perimeter walk since their people had gotten back from Mt. Weather but he got the distinct impression that there had never been as many teenagers loitering along the inner edge of the fence as there were today. The first few he could dismiss easily enough - a girl and a boy who appeared to be sunbathing despite the slight chill in the air - but the next few pairs were simply sitting and staring into space or playing with something in their hands. By the time David was halfway to their tiny section of campgrounds, he realized the kids weren’t just playing with whatever they’d found lying around; each and every one of them had had some kind of weaponry, whether it was a knife or a sword or a long piece of metal. 

The kids weren’t loitering, they were on guard duty, posted at even distances between his own guards, and David had to walk away quickly so that his wide smile wasn’t spotted by the nearest girl’s sharp gaze. When he got far enough to get some cover from one of the lone surviving trees in their crash site, he turned back to look at her. Her dirty, blonde hair was pulled back, her face was stony and her skin pale, and her weapon - a short lance - was digging into the ground in specific patterns, as if she was writing letters one on top of each other in the dirt. She looked relaxed enough despite her angry energy, but whenever someone got within sight, her eyes flit up immediately and she tracked them surreptitiously until they were gone. She would then look out to the forest, her eyes sweeping slowly back and forth, and then it was back to her dirt. 

David watched her perform this routine a few times before another girl who couldn’t be older than fourteen walked up to her. The blonde girl stood and handed her lance over to the kid, who took her place on the grass, and listened as the blonde girl spoke and pointed to the surrounding area.

David was witnessing the changing of the guard. 

He didn’t mean to follow the blonde girl as she left, they just happened to be headed in the same direction. But if the knowledge that the kids everyone expected to be scheming were actually taking it upon themselves to protect their camp didn’t fill him with pride, the girl’s end destination nearly made him burst with it. She stopped at one of the first tents inside their boundary, and report to who she appeared to consider her superior officers: Bellamy Blake, Octavia Blake, and his own son. 

David had found out about his other life after all.

 

* * *

 

Unfortunately, “Don’t worry, my son’s in a position of authority, I have every faith in them” wasn’t something that would properly conclude a report to the Chancellor, so the next day, David started his investigations where he’d stopped the day before and arrived just in time to see Bellamy Blake lead a group of kids (including Nate) over to the hidden section of fencing through which he’d escaped the first time to save the kids in Mount Weather. 

David followed from a discreet distance, and only got back into visual range in time to see Bellamy reach into his pack and pull out handguns - guns he knew to be locked up in the weapons’ locker - to distribute to the kids, to his _son_. 

David’s radio was to his lips before he knew it, ready to call the guards to converge on them and stop them. But he didn’t press down on the button under his finger. He paused. He hesitated.

Bellamy was giving a briefing, that much was obvious, with input from his sister, and Nate was listening intently as he carefully checked the gun the way David had taught him to years ago, and then helped the boy next to him do the same.

And David…he wanted to trust his son. He _did_ trust him. He wanted to trust that whatever this was, it wasn’t something that would threaten them or the camp. He wanted to trust that his son wasn’t going farther than he could find him. There was a backpack on Nate’s back but it seemed mostly empty, like it was being brought along to be filled later, not like he had packed all his things to run off.

So, with all his instincts protesting, David holstered his radio and watched his son take point with Octavia Blake as the group slipped through the fence lines and into the forest.

“Be safe,” he whispered, more a plea than a reminder at this distance. 

David’s next hours were filled with a steady thrum of fear edging on panic, the kind that squeezed his heart and lungs and seeped into his bones until it felt like he could hardly hold anything heavier than a stack of papers. The kind that made him want to find Bellamy Blake and shake him until his every plan and machination came spilling out. 

Every other minute, he was grabbing at his radio, itching to call his guards to him, to get a search party going. But he always let go.

Instead, he busied himself by investigating how Bellamy had been able to steal weapons instead, and found a broken lock (burned right through) thrown behind some debris as the culprit. Of course, while the kids didn’t widely interact with the rest of camp, they did have someone in practically every section of camp, Mecha included, which meant simply replacing the lock would be tantamount to plugging one hole in a strainer to keep the water from passing through. 

Still, he was able to distract himself for a good half hour by pointedly dropping the busted lock on Raven Reyes’ worktable.

She did a remarkable job of not looking as guilty as she should have. Instead, she cracked a wry grin. “Not sure even I can fix that, Sergeant. Looks like it got torched.”

“Yeah, I figured it was probably a long shot,” he sighed deeply, adding a touch more world-weariness than was totally warranted. “It’s just hard enough to keep the tensions down without things like this happening.”

She obviously didn’t want to ask, but she knew it would be suspicious not to. “Things like this?”

“This is confidential,” he said, lowering his voice and making sure the room was empty because this actually didn’t need to get out to anyone who didn’t already know. “But this was on the weapons locker. And you know if this gets out, all fingers are going to be pointing at you kids because you’re easy targets.”

Her lip lifted in a sneer just slightly before she caught herself and tried to look concerned instead. 

“We’re used to the suspicion vibe,” she said instead, affecting nonchalance.

“I really wish you weren’t,” he replied sincerely. That garnered his first genuine reaction from her: contrite guilt. “Anyway, we’re going to need to figure out who did it and how so it doesn’t happen again. Ever.”

Her brow furrowed slightly at his emphasis, and she might have tried to sidestep if not for the radio on her worktable squawking to life with two short bursts of static. She tried not to react, but he could see the anxiety creeping up in her and felt bad for being satisfied that someone else was suffering with him through this.

“That was weird,” he said in an exaggerated deadpan.

“Lots of interference,” she shrugged. “We’re working on getting the Ark-wide radio going so there’s…random interference sometimes.”

“Right.”

She tried to bring them back to their conversation when she remembered that wasn’t going in a direction any less incriminating for her. She was so tense that she actually jumped when two more bursts of static came through, these ones longer than the first. 

“Doesn’t sound so random to me. You should probably look into that,” he said. “And given how busy you already are with that Ark-wide radio, I hope I don’t have any more burned off locks to bring you. If any more of these show up, we’ll have to open a full investigation.”

She didn’t acknowledge him but she wisely didn’t try to deny anything either, and he left quickly, making his way back to his semi-hidden vantage point just in time to see the group come through. Nate was still on the other side, letting the others go through first. No one looked injured, and their packs were a little fuller - one girl was actually carrying a rabbit carcass on hers. Finally, everyone was through and Bellamy held the wires apart for his son to step back into camp. 

And just like that, David could breathe again.

 

* * *

 

That night, with his little boy sleeping peacefully in his bed, David’s heart was so full that he wanted to wake Nate up and tell him just how proud a father he was. He didn’t, of course. But he did stay an extra half hour at the door wondering how a kid who’d had to practically raise himself could have turned out so well.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please ride the happy feels the end of this chapter will hopefully have given you, because there are dark times ahead...but also Minty!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, I apologize for the huge wait! The creative well dried up unexpectedly and then I got two months of killer deadlines at work. Then when I started writing again, I just didn't feel like it was good enough, which sucked muchly.
> 
> Long story short, I owe the posting of this and the next/final chapter to two amazing betas: [Ran](http://lay-it-on-me-lahey.tumblr.com/) and [Stacie](http://angelikamariepickles.tumblr.com/). They pointed out problems I'd become totally blind to, offered perfect suggestions for fixing them, and spotted so many other little details that could use a tweak. And now, I'm finally comfortable posting the rest of this work! So a million and a half thanks to you guys <3
> 
> Also, I promised Minty and damnit I held to it! And kudos to the anon who [sent me an ask on tumblr](http://milenadaniels.tumblr.com/post/127276377603/hey-are-you-ever-going-to-finish-home-i-really) and inspired a new tag for this fic - David Miller: Best Worst Father Ever.

Nights within the walls of Alpha station were quieter than they were in the camps. Plenty of people were on night shift and not minding their noise levels but the walls of their quarters mostly protected Nate and David from it all. It felt too quiet, sometimes, with the steady background noise of running pipes and electrical hum having gone silent since the crash.

This meant that David was immediately woken up when the strangled, panicked shout of his son reached him some time after midnight. Instinctively, David held himself rigidly still to listen for any other sounds, and when the next one was the heavy thump of a body hitting the floor, he shot out of his bed and raced down the hall. By the time he reached Nate’s mostly closed door, David was sure no one else was in their quarters, and it sounded like his son was alone in his room. The only sounds coming through the small gap in the door were uneven, gulping breaths and the high-pitched whines of someone trying and failing to control their need to cry; David knew that sound well. He’d heard it after the countless nightmares Nate had had after his mother died.

David’s hand instinctively rose to the door control, but he didn’t press down.

Every well-meaning part of him knew needed to press down, he needed to get in there and comfort his distressed son. But after several long seconds, David hadn’t moved, and he suddenly realized that some part of him needed his son to be better than he was, needed him to be able to make the first move David couldn’t.

Nate made another keening noise of frustration when the tears obviously weren’t stopping and David laid his forehead against the wall, whispering almost inaudibly.

_Come on, Nate, come on._

But his son didn’t hear him. And he didn’t open the door to seek his father out.

Nate stayed on the cold floor of his bedroom, alone. Eventually, he calmed down, and the crying died down to halting, wet breathing with an occasional throat clear. Then the mattress creaked and the sheets rustled, and that was it.

Within the span of three minutes, his boy had woken himself out of a nightmare, panicked, calmed himself down, and put himself back to bed all on his own, while David was the asshole who had stood outside his bedroom instead of being there for him.

Eventually, David made it back to his own bed on shaky legs and sat down, feeling entirely detached from his body.

He never got back to sleep.

 

* * *

The next morning, Nate’s footsteps passing his door shook David out of his meditative daze.

He was still sitting on the edge of his bed, and his body ached from having held the position for so long. When he recalled the events of the night, his first thought was to run out the door after his son because if anything could push him to leave, it had to be last night (never mind that Nate had no way of knowing his father had abandoned him). But he didn’t move, because ultimately, what would he be keeping him there for? A distant father who couldn’t even comfort him when he was alone and scared?

He had failed as a parent, and that wasn’t a state he could come back from anymore. He had to stop thinking he could do right by his son because it was a lie. He wouldn’t magically fix things one day. That day, if it had ever existed, had long come and gone. He understood that now.

He felt helpless and angry – angrier still when he realized he felt a grief not unlike the one he’d felt when his wife had died. His son wasn’t dead. He was out there, just outside the station walls. But in his heart, David felt that he’d lost him.

All he could do for his son now was to protect him as he did any other citizen in his capacity as Chief Guard, so that’s what he did.

He went to Mecha to find an engineer with no ties to the former delinquents to refit a proper lock on the armory – something he should have done the minute he’d discovered it burned off.

Then he had the guards inventory their stocks. He wasn’t surprised to see Bellamy had put all the guns back right in their places, most of the ammo still accounted for, but he alerted his men to the possibility of more guns being found in camp.

He didn’t go as far as to order a search of their tents, but it was close.

The next step would be to get the kids alone to tell them just how it was going to be from now on. David would be damned if he let them fall into routines of lying and stealing that would just end up separating them from the rest of camp for good. They needed to be integrated, brought into the fold, not left to their own devices.

 

* * *

It would of course be the great irony of David Miller’s life that as soon as he’d resolved himself to doing good by cracking down on crime in the camp, he would get home to find a robbery in progress.

The smell of burnt metal assaulted him as soon as he stepped through the door. He unholstered his gun and took the safety off before stilling. He heard no sounds in the quarters, and there were no immediate signs of foul play, but that didn’t ease his concerns.

David made for Nate’s room and was filled with a crushing fear when he glanced through the crack in the door and spotted his son sprawled face-down across his bed like he’d fallen on it without meaning to. He was in day clothes –boots still on – atop the covers, diagonally, and David’s mind was assaulted by visions of patchwork gravestones on a poisoned planet until Nate’s back rose gently upwards, and back down again.

A heavy sigh of relief shot out from David with the force of a punch, and he had to watch Nate’s cycle of breathing at least a dozen more times before his own breathing came easily again. Then, he continued his check of the quarters.

The kitchenette was clear, as was the living room, but near the defunct bathroom, the odor intensified sharply.

Plumbing throughout the Ark was no longer operational since the crash, so David’s bathroom (and that of some council members) had been turned into improvised storage rooms for valuables that couldn’t immediately be used to settle Earth. It wasn’t common knowledge but it wasn’t a stretch of the imagination either, and some of the items would be worth a fortune if the Ark ever rebuilt fully functional, non-emergency computer systems. Or, less optimistically, the various data drives could be stripped down for particular parts in the face of immediate need.

David adjusted his grip on his gun, hit the door activator, and quickly reached in to turn the light on. The room was empty, but the smell hung thick in the air and the boxes he’d personally placed here had been moved. He would need to perform an inventory but on first glance there seemed to be roughly the same amount of boxes and items he remembered placing in here, they had just shuffled around. And that wasn’t the only thing out of place – two-foot wide hole in the metal wall over the shower taps was definitely new.

He carefully toed boxes out of his way and reached out to remove the square piece of metal that was resting against the bottom edge as if to obscure what had been done. Behind it was a perfectly empty hole – the piping had been cut out. On a hunch, David tuned to the neatly stacked boxes under the sink and moved them aside with his foot. Another empty hole met him there. And the wall behind the toilet, which had all but been swallowed by a mountain of boxes, had suffered a similar fate.

David contemplatively ran his thumb lightly over the burned and rippling edge of the metal sheet in his hands. Then, he the bathroom, and finished his check of the quarters before returning to Nathan’s door. No longer consumed with anxiety over his son being hurt, he easily spotted the small acetylene torch and oblong bag tucked in with his pile of personal effects. In addition to the damning evidence, however, David noticed that despite the dark circles under his son’s eyes, Nate was sleeping much more peacefully than he had the night before. And as he’d done so many times this week, David made the deliberate decision to not reach for his walkie-talkie to report a violation in progress.

 

* * *

The cranky whooshing of Nate’s broken door woke David up from his accidental nap on the couch. He had meant to get to his room but his last memory was of unlacing his boots and stretching out his tired back, and then here he was.

There was a telltale, metallic clinking noise following Nate’s footsteps into the living room, which stopped abruptly when he caught sight of his father waiting for him.

“Going out?” David asked pointedly, his voice rough with sleep, as he sat up.

The sleepy confusion on Nate’s face was immediately wiped away and replaced by lifeless eyes and an aura of defensiveness.

“Yep.”

David nodded, wiping his hands on his face to wake himself up.

“Someone broke into the bathroom,” he said, his tone blunt. “Stole a bunch of pipes.”

Nate’s jaw ticked uncomfortably, but he stood tall, careful not to shift so the pipes in the bag on his shoulder didn’t clink together again.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we’re basically living in a junkyard,” Nate said, almost a propos of nothing.

“We’re still a people, and we still have laws,” David argued. “We need to be working together and sharing based on nee-.”

“Well I need them,” Nate interrupted heatedly, adjusting his death grip on the bag.

“What for?” David threw back.

“Nobody’s using them,” Nate evaded.

“That doesn’t matter, Nate,” David said, getting up and trying not to be hurt by the immediate step back his son took. “Everything we have will be given a purpose. You can’t just take something because they’re taking too long to figure out what that purpose will be. It’s not yours.”

“This has a purpose, but hey, you’re welcome to come claim it whenever you and your plans are ready,” Nate said. His body language was becoming agitated and when he tried to walk around the couch to leave, David quickly stepped in his way.

“And where am I going to come claim them exactly? Beyond the fence? With Bellamy Blake? Will I get a report that more pipes than those are missing today, along with a dozen of our guns? Am I going to have to take Raven Reyes out of Mecha completely? What the hell do you kids think you’re doing?”

Nate’s eyes widened and they looked away, not meeting his eyes. David hadn’t meant to tip his hand quite that much but he found he couldn’t regret it now that it was out. It was one less weight on his chest. Some of their secrets finally put out in the air. And he found he knew exactly what he needed to say now.

“Nate, the next time it’s not going to be me watching you disable the fence. It’s not going to be me piecing things together. And when that happens, I can’t protect you anymore and I… Jesus, I just want to protect you,” he said, his voice pleading.

Nate looked too stunned to speak. Despite the healthy scruff along his jaw and cheeks, he almost looked like a kid David recognized. His broad shoulders were hunched and head was bowed uncertainly.

“You’re not arresting me?” The _again_ was unspoken but not unheard.

David knew he had no right to this overwhelming sadness but it didn’t stop a ball from forming in his throat, so he shook his head as emphatically as he could.

_Never again._

Nate processed this for a moment, lifting his eyes back to his father’s to assess him. And when he took a step sideways, David didn’t try to stop him.

He took three more and he’d gone around David completely, but by the clinking bag, David could hear when he stopped on his way out.

“My friend-“ Nate began, his voice hushed. “I have a friend who needs it. It…”

David wanted to turn around but he didn’t want Nate to stop talking.

“It’s not leaving camp. And we won’t need it forever.”

The clinking started up again, getting more and more distant, and then stopped again when David called out, “Nate.”

David turned around and leaned his hip against the couch. Nate was barely two steps out the door.

“You never took any of the courses in the mechanics stream at school, did you?”

Nate frowned but shook his head.

“Didn’t need it for Guard.”

David almost managed to hide his smile.

“Those panels along the wall in the bathroom? They have a release mechanism for maintenance.”

Nate almost managed to hide the annoyed roll of his eyes.

“Just so if your friend needs more, you know, you don’t actually need to break your way in next time.”

Then, Nate’s face softened so imperceptibly it could have been missed in a blink, but David saw it, and felt lightened.

Even more so when his son offered a quiet, “Thanks,” before leaving their quarters.

 

* * *

Earth seemed like a better place to be when David woke up later that afternoon. After Nate left, he’d only stayed awake long enough to swap patrol shifts, and then easily sank into a deep sleep that left him refreshed and practically buoyant for the evening.

That’s how he found himself walking a familiar path towards the kids’ camp. Everything was quiet, as it usually was, and he was reassured to find there were fewer children guarding the perimeter tonight. He hoped that meant they were finding a place here, finding some safety and comfort.

David was about to move on when he spotted Bellamy Blake far ahead of him on the main path walking with the Chancellor’s daughter and one of the Grounders he definitely hadn’t given permission to enter Camp Jaha. When she turned her head to reply to something Bellamy said, David recognized her as Lexa, the Grounder leader - no more an adult than any of the rest of them, but that was life down here.

David sighed and resigned himself to catching up and reminding them that while they were allies with the Grounders, it didn’t mean they had free reign of Arker territory. He was almost in range to intercept them when they veered off the path to Alpha station and disappeared into a gap between a jutting out wall and the perimeter fence.

David left the path as they had and approached the gap. The closer he got, the better he could hear yelling, cheering, and the general din of loud conversations that had been completely muffled by the jutting wall. David edged slowly around the corner and spotted dozens of half-drunk kids crowding around the newcomers. Most of them were from the Ark, but a worrying number of them were Grounders he didn’t know were within camp walls. They seemed to be well integrated to the group though, and they likewise cheered when they spotted their pseudo- (and less pseudo-) leaders. Though, in all frankness, their “pseudo” status may have been an adult delusion because while Chancellor Griffin was barely able to wrangle a group of sober people, as soon as one of the three kids started to speak, the entire crowd of partiers quieted without further prompting.

David listened as Blake welcomed everyone, and thanked a small group of kids for providing the alcohol – one more thing to add to his list of investigations - namely a boy who grinned brightly if nervously when cheers rose for him, and it was then that David spotted Nate. He was cheering as loudly as the rest of them, but when the rest of the whoops died down and attention turned back to Bellamy, Nate’s eyes lingered on the boy a few moments too long.

Then, Lexa began speaking in a mix of common tongue and the Grounder language and David was reminded of his duty.

As Chief Guard, he could choose to deal with the Arker kids how he liked (leniently, apparently) but when they were involving Grounders, it was out of his hands. Still…it didn’t mean he had to call in the cavalry.

David retreated closer to the path and flicked on his walkie. He called for three of his on-call guards to be posted around the party area - out of sight so as to not create unnecessary tension, but close enough to respond to any emergencies - and turned back for just one last look. Everything about what he was witnessing was fascinating to him – it was the look into his son’s life he’d been longing for – but it felt wrong to barge into it like this without having been invited. And they’d already made one breakthrough today; there was no need to push his luck.

The Chancellor’s daughter was speaking now, and Nate had disappeared into the crowd, but David turned his attention to the boy and found him looking right back, at least a few shades paler than the rosy hue he’d worn just minutes earlier. His eyes were panicked but he wasn’t looking away and David couldn’t help but smile slightly. He was too far to try to reassure him, so he gave a nod he hoped conveyed that everything was okay, and then made sure to walk away as casually as possible so he didn’t think David was running off to get reinforcements. David did wait for his three guards to show up and made sure they understood they were there in a supervisory capacity only, but then he resumed his earlier perimeter patrol, a grin tugging at his lips hours after he’d left the party.

That grin turned into a muffled laugh when heard his very drunk son come home just before dawn and very expertly bump into nearly every piece of furniture on his way to his room. It was surreal how such a typical parental experience could make him feel so out of place and jubilant. The extra set of heavy footsteps was a surprise, but not one that he felt necessary to investigate just yet. Instead, as had become his routine, David waited a full hour after he’d heard things quiet down before tiptoeing out of his room and across the living room.

In his drunken stupor, Nate had seemingly forgotten to close his door after getting into his room so David didn’t have to squint through an inch-wide gap to see his son sleeping deeply. He wasn’t sprawled across his bed like usual, but settled neatly to one side to accommodate the other body. David couldn’t see much beyond a thick head of black hair and broad shoulders but David would be damned if that wasn’t the boy who’d spotted him.

David contemplated closing the door (as far as it would) to give them privacy, but he didn’t want to risk waking them up. They’d be hung over in the morning already, they should enjoy the comfort of their deep sleep now. Still, he did linger a few moments longer than he probably should have, but who could blame him?

His son had talked to him this morning.

His son had friends he cared about.

His son had a boy he cared about even more, by the looks of it.

And his son went to an unsanctioned party with all of them but came home to their family quarters with the boy in tow.

That had to mean something.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope this chapter was worth the wait. The next/last one will be up as soon as I can implement my betas' notes on it so hopefully by the weekend! And this last one has Minty for miles. ;)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter! I had intended to post this last weekend but then unexpected renovations happened so I'm sorry about the wait, everyone!
> 
> A million, billion thanks to my betas [Ran](http://lay-it-on-me-lahey.tumblr.com/) and [Stacie](http://angelikamariepickles.tumblr.com/) without whom this and the last chapter never would have seen the light of day. 
> 
> Also, it may amuse you to know that the working title of this chapter was "David Miller’s Guide to Shit-Disturbing as a Means of Parenting".

David was back on day shift the day after the party, and by the time he was back that evening, both boys were gone, and no trace of the other boy remained. David stifled his disappointment and told himself things were still going better than they had.

It was a little harder to convince himself of that later that night when their main door opened and David heard the distinctive sounds of two tiptoeing boys passing by his room. They didn’t knock into anything that night, but they were still making every effort to not alert David to their presence. Nate had been quiet before but not this deliberately.

He waited his customary hour and made his way to the gap in the door. This time, he listened in increments first, just in case sleep wasn’t the only thing going on, but all his ears picked up was some light snoring he’d never heard before. As he looked in, his suspicions were confirmed. His son was dating a snorer, though it didn’t seem to be bothering Nate at all. The boy was sleeping on his back, unlike the night before, and Nate was the one pressed all along him this time, his arm reaching across the boy’s chest and holding on limply.

On the plus side, Nate was sleeping at home every night now and he wasn’t disappearing at odd times anymore. And the boy had started a little pile of personal effects on the floor next to Nate’s, which was oddly heartening. But they were still sneaking him in and out and making every effort to avoid David during the day. He’d once spotted them at the mess hall and they’d looked as though he’d discovered them plotting an assassination.

David didn’t think he’d ever given his son the impression he’d have a problem with him dating a boy; it certainly wasn’t unheard of on the Ark with the strict population guidelines. And it would be pretty hypocritical to look down on the boy for being a delinquent when his own son was. So all that remained as a possible explanation was their own relationship, David and Nate’s. Despite their talk a few days ago, they hadn’t made any more progress on being a part of each others’ lives so why would Nate want to share the most important part of his now?

But that confrontation the other day _had_ worked. And David thought he knew just how to start the next one and get them past this.

 

* * *

“ _Dad_.”

The call was so foreign and so insistent that David, to his everlasting shame, actually looked around the room before realizing he was being addressed. Nate stood in the doorway of HQ, his expression flickering between thunderous and uncomfortably embarrassed at having attracted the attention of the room.

Chancellor Griffin looked vaguely amused, like she could commiserate with hearing that tone from your only child, and she dismissed David from the meeting easily. He didn’t think of refusing – he’d been waiting for this moment for hours.

“Son,” he replied with exaggeration when he joined Nate. His son didn’t look amused, and immediately started off on a path that would lead them to their quarters and as soon as they were behind the closed door, he let loose.

“What the hell did you do to my stuff?” Nate exclaimed, barely restraining himself from yelling.

“It’s in your room,” David replied easily.

Nate’s eyes flared angrily, and he licked his lips as a self-calming mechanism. “No, it’s not.”

David smirked softly, walked down to his former bedroom door, and opened the door, gesturing inside.

“Yes, it is.”

Nate’s eyes narrowed suspiciously but he came forward to peer into the room, quickly spotting his things next to the bed. Then, Nate noticed the other boy’s things – really just a sweatshirt and a few plastic bags David hadn’t dared to open – had also been moved, and placed deliberately next to his, and he stilled.

“You switched our rooms?”

“You needed a bigger bed, the other one isn’t made for two people,” David said. 

“How - “

David raised an eyebrow. “You’re not as quiet as you think you are.”

A heavy blush rose in Nate’s cheeks, peeking through his beard, and David realized he may have been misunderstood. Attempting to shake off the growing awkwardness of the moment, David gestured to the pile and asked, “Pipes?”

Nate ducked his head and sucked in his lips like he did when he was self-conscious, but he nodded.

“Well,” David continued, “now you won’t risk breaking your neck falling off the bed, and the door to this room actually closes properly so…”

Nate said nothing, but his posture grew more relaxed, contemplative, and David took a wild chance.

“Can I know his name?”

He could have found out from any number of people in the Camp, but for some reason he’d wanted to hear it from Nate himself. He wanted them to have that. And for a moment, as Nate’s eyes roved over his new room, David thought he might not get it. But then, Nate crossed his arms low across his chest and said, “Monty.”

“Monty,” David repeated, nodding agreeably. “Do I get to meet him?”

That earned him the full weight of Nate’s suspicion again, and David had to force himself to remain calm and loose.

“Why?”

David shrugged. “Because he’s important to you. So, he’s important.”

And that look - that heartbreaking and mending look Nate had given him when he’d understood he wouldn’t be arrested this time around - it was back, and David knew he’d won this. Nate looked away quickly, but David had seen it. He’d done right here.

“I’ll see,” Nate said casually. “Thanks. For the room.”

“Anytime,” David said.

 

* * *

He didn’t get to meet the boy - _Monty_ \- that night. Nor the night after. On the third night, he did get to hear him, but in the worst of circumstances.

David’s nightly treks to check on his son had become a lot less useful once he’d switched their rooms. He could hear Nate and Monty come home a lot better now that David had the inch-wide gap to connect him to the rest of their quarters, but now that their own door closed completely, he couldn’t hear as well or make a visual check at all. It was as he’d intended, really, they needed their privacy. It just meant that he got to see even less of his son than the next-to-none he already was.

But that night, despite two metal doors, he was jolted out of sleep a couple hours after his check by the awful screams of a nightmare that wouldn’t let up. In an awful deja vu, David ran to his son’s room and was ready to slap his hand on the door’s panel when he hesitated. This time, his curiosity wasn’t as selfish as it had been the other night. Tonight, he just didn’t want to interrupt whatever comfort was already being offered within.

He had recognized the scream as Nate’s, but now he could hear Monty’s voice talking lowly and continually while his son tried to calm down. David couldn’t hear any specifics but he thought he caught some garbled bits that sounded like “I’m here” and “we're out” and “we’re safe”. David let his hand fall from the panel, rested his head against the cold wall, and tried to mentally send the same messages through to them both.

 

* * *

The next morning, David was on the couch lacing up his boots when the door to Nate’s room opened and surprised him. The boys usually disappeared much earlier or much later than him, but now he lifted his head to catch Monty coming out in a t-shirt and shorts, looking only half awake.

“Good morning,” David said, swallowing a grin when Monty startled and nearly leapt backward, bumping into Nate who was following close behind.

Nate looked displeased at having been caught but not enough to retreat back into his room.

“Dad,” he greeted, the faintest hint of warning in his tone as he manually guided Monty to the comfy chair next to the couch before stepping back into his room.

Only once he’d been dropped into the seat did Monty try to shake off his sleepiness and shock and reply with an embarrassed, “Good morning, hi.”

“Hi,” David repeated warmly.

Nate came back with one of the plastic bags David recognized, and opened it to reveal dried meats. He gave a piece to Monty and picked one for himself before offering the bag to David.

“Want some?”

David reached in and picked the first thing his fingers touched. “What is it?”

“It’s from the Grounders,” Nate replied vaguely, leaning back on the arm of the comfy chair. “They say it’s deer.”

“But not mutated deers,” Monty added helpfully. “We made sure to check.”

Mutated deers. David didn’t want to know.

It was tough and salty, but he had yet to find a food outside of fruits on this planet that didn’t taste awful.

“It’s good,” he said. The boys nodded in tandem, neither one particularly enthused.

They looked tired, their skin a little more sallow than it ought to be, and David figured that came from a night of dealing with nightmares. Especially the kind that get you screaming in terror. But tired as they were, they’d still chosen to come out into the living room to eat even though he knew they had his scheduled damn near memorized at this point. It made him feel like this was the invitation he’d been waiting for.

“So, Monty,” he began, noting the return of the warning in Nate’s eyes, “where are you from?”

“Farm station,” Monty replied, which answered the question of whether or not the boy had family who would be missing him every night he spent in their quarters. He didn’t bother to reassure Monty that no news could be good news when it came to Farm Station’s survival; any information Monty had from Mecha was likely to be more recent than David’s at the moment.

David nodded. “Were you in the agro stream at school?”

“Um, no. I was actually recruited for Engineering before…”

David politely ignored where that sentence led, and something in Nate’s posture relaxed in response.

“But I know a lot just from growing up there,” Monty rushed to add. “So I’ll probably end up helping with the crops soon.”

David also ignored the obvious lead-in to the question of what he’d been doing these past few weeks.

“Well, as far as I know, only a few of our engineers made it down here so far so we’re lucky to have you wherever you decide to pitch in.”

Monty looked grateful.

“I think you’re going to be late for your shift, dad,” Nate reminded him, a strange openness present in his voice now. He even picked up the bag anew and offered it to him. “Do you want to take some for later?”

He really didn’t, but he wasn’t going to refuse anything his son wanted to offer him so he took two.

“Thanks,” he said with all sincerity. “You boys have a good day.”

“Thanks, Mr. Miller,” Monty said, getting up from the chair out of a reflex that had Nate ducking his head to hide a put-upon grin. “It was nice to finally meet you.” When Monty’s hand reached out for David’s, however, Nate rolled his eyes and quickly grabbed his forearm. Evidently, Nate wasn’t ready for that level of formality, but accidentally holding hands in front of his old man was just this side of acceptable. David could definitely live with that.

“You too, Monty,” he replied warmly before locking eyes with his son, who offered him a small smile and a grateful nod.

It was the best morning he’d had in nearly a decade.

 

* * *

In the nights that followed, David found himself sometimes forgetting to do his nightly ritual check, and other times he made the conscious decision not to go. It just didn’t feel as necessary anymore. He started seeing the boys during the day, now that they weren’t avoiding him anymore. Sometimes, they didn’t bother to close the door to their room if they were just in for a few minutes or just sitting inside and talking, even though they knew David would be able to hear them through his door’s gap. That was actually how David had relearned the sound of his son’s unabashed laughter, years after the last time he’d heard it. It was deeper now, and quieter, but it grew and grew as Monty recounted a story David couldn’t quite make out, and at its peak, he made the executive decision that he would do everything in his power to keep Monty around and in his son’s life for as long as he could.

This…this was the bright summer’s day to a decade-long winter’s night.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t without its heartaches, however. On one such night, David had just been getting into bed when shouts of “No!” and “Please!” came piercing through their quarters. He was at Nate and Monty’s door in a flash, hovering just outside like he’d often been at this point, just in time to hear his son actively waking Monty up. There was a brief moment of quiet when Monty finally broke out of his nightmare, but that quickly dissolved into heartbreaking sobs, and it was Nate’s turn to repeat comforting nothings and everythings until the boy tired himself out again.

David waited at the door for the long minutes it took for quiet to reign once more, only turning to leave once he felt they’d probably fallen back to sleep. But he wasn’t three steps gone when a mechanical whoosh sounded behind him.

Nate tiptoed out of the dark room quietly and didn’t look the least bit surprised to find his father hovering just outside his door. He took a last look inside the room to make sure Monty was truly asleep before closing his door again and facing his dad.

David couldn’t get a read on him - between his tiredness, the darkness of the living room, and the shock of having been found out, all he could process was that his son was waiting in front of him with his arms crossed.

“Are you okay?” he heard himself whisper.

Nate nodded. “I’m fine. He just dreamed of the mountain. It was a lot harder for him than for a lot of us. The ones of us that made it out at all anyway.”

David wanted to unravel that, but now wasn’t the time.

“Why did you come out?”

Nate raised an eyebrow and smirked. “You’re not as quiet as you think you are.”

David snorted softly. “I’m a ninja,” he protested.

“You’re really not,” Nate said, smirk still fully engaged. He leaned against the arm of the couch and contemplated his dad. “You stopped doing this for a while. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t going to start up again.”

“You knew I was checking up on you?”

Nate nodded. “I’ve been a really light sleeper since the Skybox.”

David winced, imagining the dozens of times he needlessly woke up his son in the middle of the night.

“I thought, when you stopped, it meant you thought I wasn’t getting up to anything…you know.” Nate shrugged.

“That’s not what- No.” David took a subconscious step towards him out of protest. “That was never what it was about. I was just looking in on you, making sure you were okay.”

“In my bed, in Alpha Station, in the middle of the night?” Nate asked skeptically.

“It’s a parent thing,” David argued. “Your- your mom used to do it all the time when you were little.”

Nate’s eyes widened, and it was anyone’s guess as to whether it was in response to David willingly bringing up his mother, or him expressing a desire to be parental. But it felt easier to be honest now. Whether it was the comfort of darkness, or the fact that they’d gotten marginally closer, or maybe just that Nate had walked out of his room and met him halfway, metaphorically…it didn’t matter. Suddenly, David felt he had everything he needed to try.

“You need to know,” he began, “that I was a bad father.”

His confession hung in the air like brittle glass and Nate stilled, waiting -  _always waiting -_  but David was done with that now. In his mind, he threw the brittle glass to the ground and when it shattered, everything he’d held back for so many godforsaken years came rushing out.

“You already knew that,” he shook his head, “of course you did, you lived through it. But you need to know now that _I_ know it. I knew it then too but I just…I couldn’t do anything to fix it. I didn’t know what to do and eventually it just got easier to do nothing and hope for the best.”

Nate’s arms crossed into each other a little more tightly and he looked away, but that only bolstered David because he knew now this it could be okay. That there was a version of this story in which they could hash this out now and have lunch together tomorrow. He believed that now.

“And I sent you to the Skybox and Nate,” David thickly swallowed past the tremble in his voice, “honest to god, I think I must have just lost it completely or maybe I really was that stupid because there is no way, in any version of this world, that any law is going to be more important to me than you. Not ever.” He heard the words and cringed before squaring his shoulders and amending as, “Not ever again.” He spoke the words slowly, forcefully, and solemnly, and hoped that some part of Nate could still believe him.

“Seeing you walk down that mountain was one of the best days of my life. And after that, I just needed to know you were okay. Or as okay as you could be, given the circumstances. And checking in while you were asleep seemed like the easiest way to do that without-” without what? Without angering him, without having to force him to deal with his father in his face 24/7. But that’s not where he wanted this conversation to go. “…without crowding you.”

“Until you got bored again and stopped?” Nate retorted, and David would have laughed outright if there wasn’t such a heavy thread of self-consciousness in his voice.

“Until you found someone better,” David corrected. “Someone who can look after you better than I could. You boys are good for each other. Since Monty’s been around, you’ve seemed better. Plus,” David continued, trying to fix his face somewhere between supportive and uncomfortable, “while I love having him around, there’s just some things I don’t ever want to walk in on or eavesdrop on accidentally. So I figured it was best to stop early.”

He couldn’t see a blush in this darkness but the embarrassed eye-roll made him believe it was there.

“I’m gonna be checking in on you pretty much every day for the rest of my life, like a real father is meant to,” David promised. “It just doesn’t have to be in the dead of night anymore. Not if you’re willing to put up with me during the rest of the day.”

Nate regarded him for a moment, his gaze almost completely free of suspicion now, and then smiled softly.

“Okay,” he agreed.

Simple as that.

Then he got to his feet and pointed to his room. “I should get back in there before he wakes up again.”

“Yeah,” David agreed quickly. He wasn’t sure he’d ever spoken so much in his entire life, and definitely not so honestly or openly, and for all that he was 100% committed to being there for his son from now until the end of his days, he could really use a lot of alone time until the shaking in his hands calmed and his heart settled back into its natural rhythm. “Sleep well.”

Nate turned towards his room, but before David could process it, he spun back around and threw his arms around his father in a too-tight squeeze. David’s arms, more out of muscle memory than anything else, snapped around his son and held him with everything he had. Nate was too tall to fit under his chin anymore and a spike of mourning shot through David before he brushed it away to concentrate on his nearly adult son willingly hugging him because this was it. This was everything.

And nothing in the world could have stopped him from saying, “I love you, son” against Nate’s hair, his voice wobbling slightly.

Or stopped his hand from migrating from Nate’s shoulder blade to grip the back of his neck when his son whispered it back to him.

And when it was over, he watched Nate go back into his room, with one final wave goodnight before the door slid shut, and David realized that after years of promising himself he’d to better in some hypothetical tomorrow, he’d finally succeeded. There was still lots to make up for, and years of pain wasn’t going to be brushed away with one heartfelt speech and a hug, but David’s tomorrow had come, and now he could finally start looking forward to the day after.

 

* * *

David woke up feeling rested, which was a feeling now so foreign that he almost couldn’t identify it. When he’d dressed and walked out of his room, he found the boys sitting on the couch, in the middle of some kind of hand-game.

“Morning,” he greeted, hesitantly settling down in the armchair to lace his boots.

“Morning!” Monty replied distractedly, grinning when he appeared to win the game.

Nate simply nodded in his direction, but after sharing a look with Monty, he rubbed the palms of his hands on his knees and sucked in his lips.

“We were…going to get breakfast on the eastern side,” he said, haltingly. “Did you…want to come with?”

There was so much of this moment David would never forget — how nervous his son was, his leg straying sideways to press into Monty’s for support; how even Monty looked nervous, his eyes flitting back and forth between the Miller men.

But mostly, he would never forget that how his son actually looked relieved - grateful even - when David replied, “Yeah, sounds good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed this Miller men relationship patch with a slice of POV Outsider on Minty. I'm not sure if this series will have another part just yet (since my writing has slowed down so much) but if so, it would be heavily Minty with more family feels (maybe Green family feels?? aaw yeah!) but that's for future days.

**Author's Note:**

> Minty goodness coming up next!


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